Thursday, May 21, 2009

Gamer is a person who likes to play games, basically the role playing games. However, today the gamer is mainly used to describe a person who plays video games or computer games. It is basically used to refer to people who spend a major portion of their free or rest time playing games.

Earlier a typical gamer used to be a male typically in the age group 16-19years. But today there are older gamers in the gaming community. According to some surveys the average age of the male video gamer in US is 35 years and in UK is 23 years who have been playing video game for over a decade. Also it is estimated that nearly 40 percent of the video gamers are women.

There are many subgroups of gamers:

Casual gamers: They do not spend much time on playing games and prefer to play simple game rather than complex ones.

Hardcore gamers: They spend most of their leisure time on game and are quite dedicated to the cult of video gaming. They are usually quite proficient.

Retro gamer: They only collect and play classic old games from the earlier gaming period.

Professional gamer: They play for money. They are experts in the games of their choice and seldom play any other game.

A number of video games are released every year. A few games like the "Need For Speed" series and "Prince of Persia" series have been well received by the gamers. Strategy games like the "Age of Empires" as well as "World of Warcraft" have quite a fan following of their own. In the online multiplayer arena, "Counter Strike" and "Halo" series have been quite successful.

The gamer of today is interested in challenging games whether it is a strategy game or a violent gore filled game. The profile of the gamer has changed and it has become older with a strong female presence. The demand of the current gamers is that the developers understand the change in the gamer attitude and develop games accordingly. There is a general consensus among the gamers is that the artificial intelligence that the games employ is too weak and the opponents are just dumb. More attention should be paid to the artificial intelligence development in the game. Also the demand is there for games with realistic graphics and real world emulations.

The gamers are also on the lookout for games that show creativity of the developer and not simply present the old game, with a few minor modifications, under a new name. Also, since the newer versions of the game have higher graphics and more complex moves and levels, the chances of bugs or errors in the game is quite high. A through testing of the game before the release is also expected. Frequent crashes in a game discourage the gamers from picking up subsequent releases of the game. Last but not the least, the developers must realize that now females form a large percentage of gamers and presenting them in a bad light in the game will severely affect the popularity of the game in their eyes.

This is a full article which also submitted at article directory. Read more articles please visit ezinearticle.com.